mind over matter - theodore nott

56. slipping through my fingers

tw: death..

SLIPPING THROUGH MY FINGERS

June 30th, 1997.

The thoughts of the previous night imprinted on Florence's mind. That night, after returning to her own dorm, she awoke at two fifty six AM. When she awoke in the pitch black, sitting up in a sweat that was caused by a nightmare she'd forgotten as soon as her eyes shot open, she was met with a soul-crushing fear.

The fear was great, greater than she had ever felt in her entire existence. In those few seconds of her being awake that lasted merely under a minute, there was only one thought in the deserted jungle of her mind.

The calm before the storm was over.

After awaking again, this time at the appropriate waking time. She didn't seem to remember what had happened the night before — well, the morning of that day, however, she knew something was off. She felt cold, lifeless and tired in the strangest possible ways. Sure, she'd felt those feelings and emotions many times before. But not in the very ways she felt them then. They were out of the ordinary, unknown.

She felt like her feelings were trying to tell her something — a secret, of some sort. But she couldn't quite find a way to figure out what they were trying to tell her. It was a warning, she presumed. Although, she could've already guessed that.

The Slytherin girl had always noticed how strangely accurate her gut instincts were. However, sometimes, a large part of her strongly hoped for that terrifying skill of hers to go away. It may have warned her for the worst, but it was the worst feeling she could've possibly imagined. She felt as if she had no power over it, either. No power over herself. She felt utterly helpless — like she knew something terrible was going to happen, but she couldn't do anything to stop it. She sometimes had dreams, nightmares, even, that ended up coming true either the next day, a week ahead or years later. It varied all the time. The dreams could go from eating pancakes and then eating them when she woke up, to getting into a car crash and being in a scarily similar one several years later.

She'd spent the entire day with Blaise — despite, of course, attending classes, but she had all of them that day with Blaise, anyways — because Draco and Theo happened to be off somewhere else. Theo had been with them for most of the day, but they hadn't seen Draco at all until he randomly appeared out of the blue when they were all chilling in the common room and whisked Theo away to somewhere unknown to the other two.

Draco had been acting incredibly odd for the entire year, wearing a face of pure panic almost every day. But when he suddenly came to get Theo at around six PM... there's no 'but, Draco's expression was the exact same with the ridiculously pathetic fake smile to hide it.

They then both returned for dinner, seeming increasingly frustrated and off as the seconds passed by, but neither Florence and Blaise knew what was going on. They knew there was some sort of mission the two were fulfilling for the Dark Lord, but neither had been fortunate enough to be told what exactly it was they had been told to do. However, the looks on Theo's and Draco's faces and the way they were acting made both Blaise and Florence wonder whether their task had been set for that day. Also, given the fact that the task was set for the two of them by Voldemort, of all beings, they could take a wild guess that it wasn't as joyful as baking cookies with the House-elves.

"What's with those two?" Florence didn't even seem surprised by the sudden voice whispering beside her left ear, even though she was quite busy studying the two sat across from her.